Short news, Spring edition: Urban Tapestries, SketchUp does history in 3D

Look, another local Google Earth blog: Google Earth CoolStuF is a Dutch blog focused mainly on local dynamically updated overlays, but European and global ones sneak in there as well.

More collaborative geospatial authoring gets retrofitted with KML. Now it’s the turn of Urban Tapestries, a London-based “experimental software platform for knowledge mapping and sharing — public authoring.” The trial run from 2004 is now available as a KMZ file. It’s not unlike geotagged public SMS messages with personal impressions or photos. The nexr version, UT2, will include Google Earth support by default; this could turn into a popular form of microblogging.

Finnish Web 2.0 thinker Jyri Engeström visits Tim O’Reilly, and reports that virtual worlds are very much on O’Reilly’s radar.

Excellent: Historic buildings are being recreated in SketchUp, ready for placement in Google earth. Here’s the lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the ancient wonders of the world, by Hidz. Perhaps 3D Warehouse’s metadata could already include a time attribute, in anticipation of the Google Earth timeline? (Via The Stoa Consortium)